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In the upper left hand corner of the Publisher page, there is or was a notice that some transactions from the 8th may be delayed.

Last night, I saw there had been a sale, but it did not turn up in Signature until this morning. That sale was on Sunday, the 4th of July.

My belief is that because of the batch reporting from that merchant (possibly all LS merchants?), it takes 2 to 5 days, for sales to show up in Signature. The new data seems to be available from early on Tuesday mornings to early on Saturday mornings.

I do see Leads that turn into Sales (one took 67 days as I recall), so things do work, but slowly at times.

There are a couple of things that I may need to address here as far as data/reports are concerned.

Firstly, there was a delay in our reports from around July 7th and we had posted a interface alert. I believe at this point all of the data is available. All of the clicks, impressions & sales were tracked during this time and nothing was lost.

Secondly, many advertisers do report in a batch process. Many of them report in an hourly batch so your data should not be that old. Once we get this data, the "Signature" information is matched.

Lastly, to address the fact that sometimes it takes 2-5 days for sales to show up. That is because many times advertisers don't report a sale until the product has been shipped. (This is similar to when you buy a product from a website, they don't actually charge your credit card until the product is shipped.)

I believe NBAStore & Hockey Monkey report on a daily basis. Unfortunately they don't do it hourly. rushTShirts is a new Advertiser so I don't see any recent transactions. I've asked our tech team to look into this just to make sure it is not a tech issue.

Secondly, many advertisers do report in a batch process. Many of them report in an hourly batch so your data should not be that old. Once we get this data, the "Signature" information is matched.
--Ranae

Please post a feature request on this:

I think the signature report needs to be re-worked. What I personally want, from Linkshare is a way to do cash based accounting, daily, with signatures info. This means that the primary date in the signature report should be "Posting Date" and at end of business each day, the signature report would be locked and never change.

I thought this was the original intention of the Signature report, and I am surprised that it can take up to a week to "straighten itself out". Honestly, this appears to be a design flaw on the part of engineering.

Commission Junction does a really nice job of handling "posting date" versus "transaction date" in their reports to facilitate daily cash accounting. You guys should play around with their reporting... Reversals never update an existing entry, rather they create a new entry in the reports.

Merchants, any data you provide to Google Shopping should also be in your affiliate network datafeed. More data means more sales!

Our Signature report posts both a transaction date and a process date (posting date) so you can do cash based accounting with these reports. The Signature Orders report you run in our interface will be process date based. It doesn't take up to a week to "straighten itself out". What I said was that it may take a few days for the advertiser to post the sale because some advertisers only post the order when it is shipped not the time of the actual purchase.

I am not familiar with CJ reports but from what you are describing, I believe our reports work similarly.

Also if you want to discuss more detailed with examples feel free to PM me and I will be happy to help.

The linkshare signature reports typically take 1-2 days to finalize and can take much longer. By finalize I mean all transactions are showing, with signature data. A posting date report that isn't finalized at the midnight on the day in question is not as useful. Also, while we are on the topic of midnight, GMT is not a good choice for midnight in the United States.

I find it particularly amusing that I can force signature reports to display the actual signatures by playing with the report dates. For instance, say I run a report for 7/15 - 7/15 and see signatures are missing from some transactions. I can swap the dates to be 7/15 - 7/16 (e.g. into the future) and the signatures will wink in. I believe this represents a bug..

I particularly have problems with say, Drugstore.com, which posts around midnight GMT. It can take 12-24 hours for those posts to show. In other words, a 7/15 report will have drugstore.com transactions "wink in" 12-24 hours after midnight.

So, let me re-phrase my issue... Posting date is "date" the signature data was matched with the transaction and the transaction is finalized. I should not be able to see transactions until they are "done". If I run a signature report a 12:01 GMT, it should never change.

Last edited by isellstuff; July 16th, 2010 at 09:40 AM.
Reason: typo

Merchants, any data you provide to Google Shopping should also be in your affiliate network datafeed. More data means more sales!

A report based on the posting date never changes after midnight... In Linkshare's case, the report changes quite a bit after midnight and I can never know when it it finalized. I've gone back through my accounting spreadsheet and been amazed by the transactions that have winked in several days after I did my reports. (and I always lag 1 day behind in my accounting)

My only clue that something is wrong is missing signature data, but in the case of Drugstore.com, this is not enough, because the entire transaction may be missing.

Merchants, any data you provide to Google Shopping should also be in your affiliate network datafeed. More data means more sales!

Here is a particular example... I am looking at the 7/15 signature report. It is 10 am CST on 7/16. I see a walmart transaction that has N/A in the member id field. From experience, I know that the 7/15 reports are not yet "done". I have to wait another day, because the report may change. At some point the N/A will be replaced with an actual signature and at that point I will "guess" that the data is ok to input into my spreadsheets.

I should not have to make these inferences.

Last edited by isellstuff; July 16th, 2010 at 10:11 AM.

Merchants, any data you provide to Google Shopping should also be in your affiliate network datafeed. More data means more sales!

Just so I am clear you are using posting date as the date/time when the Signature value/member id is posted. We use process date as the date the order was processed.
--Ranae

Yes, but also note the Drugstore.com case, which is not just the member id being populated... Posting date is the date that the signature transaction was fully registered with your reporting system.

When the day is done, the signature report for that day is locked and won't change. If linkshare reporting is running slow, then there are posting dates in the signature report that are empty and will always be empty.

Merchants, any data you provide to Google Shopping should also be in your affiliate network datafeed. More data means more sales!

Another question for Ranae, re: reporting, or anyone that may know. I have been pushing a specific product which I just realized is on back order and will not be shipped for 3 - 5 weeks. Would most merchants wait to submit this as a sale when the product is shipped or would the sale be visible in the reports?

I didn't see your last post but to follow up, regarding pre ordering/back ordering: The Advertiser would credit you or submit this as a valid transaction when the product is shipped. Unfortunately the advertiser wouldn't be able let you know before the order is shipped.